


Daemoralization

by InsanelyYours96



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (Not between Harry and Voldemort/Tom), Discussions of Suicide, Drabble, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, Master of Death Harry, One Shot, Personification of Souls, Pre-Slash, Toxic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24728515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsanelyYours96/pseuds/InsanelyYours96
Summary: In which Harry’s daemon breaks all of the rules by existing, and tries to break him.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Comments: 18
Kudos: 242





	Daemoralization

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Italiano available: [Daemoralization](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27725537) by [Bledyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bledyn/pseuds/Bledyn)



Harry has a daemon.

He knows that because _everybody_ has a daemon, though Harry hadn’t realized that at first. For as long as he can remember it has been a shadow at the edge of his vision. At night Harry will sometimes watch it, and be watched in turn - but they do not speak.

Before today, Harry didn’t know that daemons _could speak._

“Hey daemon?” Harry whispers into the darkness.

There is a sudden shifting, and then he is pinned down to his cot by a clawed hand around his throat.

 _“My name is Perses,"_ the daemon snarls down at him. Its breath is rancid, its teeth vicious, jagged things. _“Do not forget it,_ boy _."_

The claws dig into his neck and Harry sputters and whines and chokes, cringing away. He is _afraid._ There is a brief sting and then the daemon pulls back with a noise of disgust.

Cold eyes glare at him through the night.

Harry wishes he’d never said anything at all.

Later, once Harry has regained his courage (the pinpricks of pain were gone come morning), he tries to speak to the daemon again.

This time, he is careful to address it by name.

“Perses, you’re mine?” he asks. 

Harry believes the question is innocent enough - Perses follows him around, so who else's could he be? - but the daemon snaps, “ _I belong to nobody._ ”

It does not touch Harry, though, and that’s good. Still, Harry is left to stare down at his hands in confusion, frowning. “Oh.”

 _“Stupid thing,”_ Perses hisses. Harry flinches under the words. 

‘I’m not _stupid_ ,’ he thinks fiercely, but if Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and Dudley _and his daemon_ all think so, then mustn’t he be? 

Harry frowns and turns away from it.

Sleep is long to come.

Harry learns most things through observation. Interaction is highly discouraged by the Dursley’s, so he sits quietly in the garden and watches through the cracks of the fence.

This is how he learns that daemons don’t hate their people. 

But Harry’s does. 

The first time Harry lashes out against Perses, he is six. 

Dudley and his friends have left Harry in the dirt, with blooming bruises, loose teeth, and a terribly stinging lip. The physical pain does not make Harry falter - Uncle Vernon’s done worse before. It’s the _words_ that twist into his mind, burrowing and scraping.

Dudley is cruel. Harry knows that. And yet -

His cheeks burn as much as his eyes do. He squints up at Perses, glasses lost. The daemon never makes a move to help Harry, but this time it is snickering at his predicament. 

And Harry? Well, he’s had more than enough of being laughed at for one day. 

He pushes himself up onto his elbows and glares as fiercely as he can manage. “Why don’t you like me?” He demands, bitter and hurt. “Everybody else’s daemons like them!”

The atmosphere changes swiftly. Perses amusement is snuffed out; in its place is only rage. Its form shifts violently, into a large, vicious hound, red-eyed with an unnaturally gaping maw. The features are disjointed, like puzzle pieces that have been pressed together but don’t fit. It makes for a rather disturbing image, especially because the hound is without fur, and its skin is a sickly grey. 

_“I have told you before,_ boy _,”_ Perses snarls, pinning down his arm. Its claws _—talons—_ draw blood immediately. _“I am not_ yours _.”_

“So why don’t you leave?!” Harry demands, shaking with hurt and anger and fear because what if Perses _does leave._ “If you hate me so much, if you aren’t mine, just go then!”

 _“I can’t!”_ Perses roars in his face. _“You stupid, useless little_ squib _, isn’t it clear by now that I’m stuck with you?!”_

Useless. Stupid. Waste of space. If Harry’s own soul thought he was all of these things, then it had to be true, right?

“Get off me!” Harry cries out, tears rolling down his cheeks now. Perses snarls, his other paw raising up to _swipe—_

Harry flails out his hand with a high cry of fear and anger. “Get away, get _away!”_

Perses flies back, impacting the school’s brick wall _hard_ , and crumples to the ground. Harry continues to gasp and sob, even as he pushes himself up. He stares at it, three meters away (as far as they’ve even been) and hopelessly wishes that things will _stop_. 

He doesn’t want to be hurt anymore - not by the Dursleys, not by Perses, and not by children that think he is a freak because of a daemon that won’t even claim him.

Harry remembers days, _weeks_ , of Perses not speaking to him. Remembers his desperation for company, for _words_. 

Back then he had thought that vitriol was better than silence. Now he isn’t so sure. 

It’s Harry’s eleventh birthday when Hagrid gives him a gift. Gives him Hedwig, sharp beaked and beautiful. Clever, too, and willing enough to acknowledge him. 

She lasts a week. Long enough for Harry to bond with her. Long enough for him to _care_. 

The eighth morning he wakes to a piercing sound, high and pained, and jolts up with a gasp. 

There is a terrible crunching, and red. _So much red._

Hedwig’s feathers should have been white -

“Stop— _don’t—“_

Harry has never heard of a daemon that eats, but his does. It slaughters Hedwig right in front of him, messily tearing with its teeth until her awful, pained screeching stops. And then? Then it grins up at him through a bloody mouth and gulps her down. 

Harry is laid out on his floor, shaking, shocked, hand reaching out helplessly. “W-why—”

But Harry knows why. 

He knows why Perses does everything - does _anything._

To hurt him. 

Harry’s mind still struggled with the concept that his own soul is so against him. That it wishes to _traumatize him_ , to tear him apart piece by piece. 

Perhaps, he tries to reason, Perses had felt threatened. Hedwig had been superseding into its territory, in a way. 

The excuse is flimsy. Harry knows better. 

Perses wants his fear, his tears, his misery. Perhaps it even wants Harry _blamed_ for Hedwig’s death. 

Daemons weren’t meant to be able to touch animate things. Everybody would think that Harry has done this. 

The thought has him shaking all the harder.

Eyes follow Harry. Words follow him, too, never quiet enough to skate beyond comprehension. 

People are startled, worried, repulsed. Even in the wizarding world he is an abnormality. 

He looks down the line of First Years and sees their daemons. There are many dogs and cats and owls—many small, soft creatures—even a smattering of reptiles, collecting warmth not their own. 

Harry is the only one with a warped, twisted creature winding behind him, never close enough to touch unless it was nipping at his heels. Perses was looking particularly hideous today, bones clear through its grey-green skin, sharp yellow teeth gleaming from the daemons maw. It is an angled creature, odd and off-putting to look at. Harry can’t find the beauty in it, though so many times as a child he had tried. Tried to love Perses as others loved their constant companions, their souls. 

He sits on the three legged stool beneath the sorting hat, wary as it dropped over his eyes. Perses was fond of testing him. Striking out when Harry was blind, or already hurt, was typical of it. Would the audience try to stop the daemon, or egg it on?

 _Oh dear,_ the Sorting Hat says to him. _This isn’t right at all._

Harry flinches as though struck and his daemon hisses, a furious, crackling sound. 

_"Show no weakness,"_ Perses had snapped in their Hogwarts Express compartment. _"Show no shame or fear. Even you should be able to manage that much."_

 _God._ Harry swallows around his mistake and dreads Perses retribution. 

“It was a fox once,” Voldemort tells him, red eyes gleaming from Quirrell's skull. “How it has _twisted_ since then.”

Something strange flares in Harry’s chest—a misplaced protectiveness. The faintest flickers of _rage._

“Shut up,” he snarls. “He is _perfect._ He is _mine._ ”

Voldemort looks at the scars on Harry’s arms, silvery things left by teeth and claws. “What a self destructive thing you are, Harry Potter. Should I bother to harm you when you’ll just as quickly kill yourself?”

Harry glances at his daemon. Its ears are pressed to its head, mouth twisted into a snarl, directed not at Voldemort but at him. Something in him aches, but he tears his eyes away, too familiar with Perses disdain to falter. 

“Is that what you brought me here for?” He wonders. “To kill me?”

Voldemort’s head tilts. “One would think you believe highly of yourself without such obvious contradiction, boy.”

Harry’s fingernails bite into his hands. He’s used to being taunted about Perses, but coming from Voldemort it is _different._ He is one of the reasons Harry was left with the Dursley’s—perhaps the reason why his soul was so twisted, so _wrong._

His magic swirls restlessly in the air around them. Voldemort seems to sense it, for he wastes no more time. “Look into the mirror,” the Dark Lord orders. 

The Mirror of Erised looks paler than it did weeks ago. Disenchanted. Even the frame has lost its luster.

Harry wonders how much Voldemort has broken down the spells that made it. 

A part of him is viciously satisfied. He never wants to peer into this mirror again to see Perses cuddled up to him, content and loving. Doesn’t want to believe _that_ to be his deepest desire. 

Voldemort has the wand and the power and so Harry obeys. He can twist himself free in a moment of distraction, but first he must cause one. 

His reflection smirks at him, winks, and slips a red stone into his pocket. The Philosopher's Stone - a stone of eternal life. 

Harry fears death but beyond that he fears living forever as an unloved _freak_. A part of him thinks Perses is here to break his will, to get him to take his own life so that he can move on. But Harry is stubborn. He won’t bend to what is expected of him, not for the Dursley’s or magical society or even his own daemon. 

Harry pulls the stone out of his pocket and tosses it as Voldemort’s face. The man moves swiftly, catching it. 

Harry sees the surprise in his eyes, the wonder. The _thrill_ of getting something long-desired. 

“Is that all you needed?” He asks. 

Perses cackles. “ _I_ _mpudent waste of space,_ ” he taunts Harry. “ _You’ll sign your death with your mouth._ ”

“ _Can’t you ever keep your opinion to yourself?”_ Harry snaps back, irritated. “ _If_ _I die, I’m dragging you along with me._ ”

“ _Will you really?_ ” It taunts. Harry grits his teeth and looks away. Voldemort is no longer gazing at the stone, but at him. His eyes are no less greedy than moments before, and nothing good can come of such a look. 

“ _How unexpected…”_ Voldemort hisses. Perses rears back in shock. Harry thinks that if it lunged for Voldemort it might just be able to bite him. Hedwig flashes through his mind - his stomach churns. 

“You understand it,” Harry says, dread sweeping through him. Nobody ever has before. Perses derisive laughs and repulsed body language are clear to all, but cruel words have always been Harry’s alone. And now...

“I do,” says Voldemort, “I _am_ a parselmouth, Harry.” 

“A what?”

Voldemort ignores his question, eyes darting back down to the scars on his arms. If he wasn’t kidnapped in the middle of the night there would be a robe to hide them, but as things are he twitches with discomfort and glares. 

“Lord Voldemort will not forget what you have done this night, Harry. You shall be rewarded.”

“We are more alike than you realize, Harry Potter,” Tom Riddle says. 

Harry’s laugh is an ugly thing. It sounds like one of Perses, bitterly cold, crackling like glass shards beneath a boot. 

“You disagree.” 

“You may hate yourself, but your soul does not hate you.”

Tom looks _surprised_. His eyes turn to Perses, who lays on the floor and watches their antics indifferently. 

“You think it hates you?” 

It grins. “ _He_ knows _I hate him_.”

Daemons are only meant to talk to their people, but Perses has found great joy in breaking this rule from the moment Voldemort revealed he could understand him. 

Harry grits his teeth and braces himself. He will live in spite of the cruel beast.

He thinks, briefly, of Voldemort and the stone. ' _You give poor rewards, Dark Lord.'_

Harry is thirteen years old and being universally hated is an old hat. A seventh Ravenclaw walks up to his table in the library and places a book in front of him. She says nothing, disgust and pity warring in blue-grey eyes. She just sets it down and walks away. 

The title is a simple thing: _Severings._

He feels a chill creep up his spine, but he ignores it.

Harry discovers very quickly that Severing is a way to get rid of a daemon _permanently_. Typically it was only done to the worst of criminals - a punishment akin to the dementors kiss.

Perses watches him read the book, tail twitching, teeth bared. As if waiting for him to do it. To mutilate himself. It should be exciting to the daemon, but Harry thinks it looks _scared._

“Severing kills you,” he decides, after observing this behavior for several minutes.

Perses gives no confirmation but lashes out with its tail. The book soars away, crashing into the wall. 

“Well?” It hisses. “You know now. Aren’t you going to do it?”

Harry looks at it dispassionately. ( _Hedwig_ , a part of him whispers.)

“No,” he says, after a long pause. “You want me to suffer so much? Suffer along with me.”

“Harry Potter,” says Voldemort, “the Boy-Who-Lived… you have been holding onto something for me.”

A pale, long fingered hand brushes Harry’s scar— _i_ _t hurts, it hurts, it hurts._ Were Perses anything but what it was, it would strike out at the man causing its soul such pain. But if Harry had ever believed Perses might protect him, _defend him_ , that expectation had long been crushed out of him. 

“ _Oh._ Such a cruel soul for one so sweet, Harry,” the Dark Lord murmurs. Perses laughs, a wretched, high sound. Harry doesn’t wince any more; he’s sure Perses will change forms soon. 

It likes it when Harry flinches. When he _suffers._

Nagini hisses at him, low and melodic, not forming any real words. Harry watches her warily. If his daemon is such a monster, what must Voldemort’s be like?

Her tongue brushes his cheek. Harry shivers, feeling a brief flash of pleasure. The sensation is unfamiliar—off putting. At least Perses had never been so cruel as to give him pleasure. Had never deceived in how unworthy it thought Harry—how underwhelming and pitiful. 

(She shouldn’t have been able to touch him. Daemons could only touch their soul-bound or other daemons. But then, soul magic was a complex thing.)

“Somebody has already broken you, Harry Potter,” Voldemort sounds displeased as he looks at Harry’s daemon. It spits a laugh, overjoyed.

 _‘Broken?’_ Harry ponders. He doesn’t _feel_ broken. He feels jagged, perhaps, like splintered glass. Perses vitriol could have turned him into a stuttering mess like Neville, or an unrepentant bully like Snape. But it didn’t—Harry didn’t _let it._

Not that it didn’t manipulate him. Perses had called him useless so he made himself useful. It called him stupid so he learned. It took time for Harry to ignore it—for him to do things for himself rather than to prove it wrong. 

But Perses _was_ the reason he could do this. 

Nagini watches him as Voldemort watches Perses, interest gleaming in her slitted eyes. Harry frowned at her and apparated. 

Perses shrieked in rage as Harry appeared behind it, snapping at his hand. “Would you rather I leave you here to shrivel?”

It settled— _for now._

Daemons weren’t meant to be able to stay far away from their soul share, but Harry’s managed. One meter, when he was young, and then the distance expanded. Two meters, then seven, then ten. They didn’t even have to be in the same _room_ by the time he was eleven. 

Freak, the Dursley’s spat, and they weren’t the only ones. There was something wrong with you for your daemon to be able to stray so far. 

Still, hundreds of kilometers was a bit much. Had Harry left it, they would have both perished.

“You could have raised me to worship you,” Harry tells it. “But you raised me to hate.”

Perses looks different than it usually does. Its form is still twisted and off-center, but it is larger in some way. _Enraged._

 _“I raised you to want to die so I could_ escape _our pitiful bond,”_ it hisses fervently. _“I haven’t come to_ like you _, miserable flea. I remember all of my lives, all of my masters—and you are, by far, the least deserving. Why won’t you just drown, wretch?”_

Sometimes Harry sees a glint in Perses eye and he wants to call out, _Liar._ But eyes are easy to fool and his are particularly bad; instead he turns and walks away. Hides behind curtains and blankets so the daemon can’t see the tears when they come. 

And oh, but they come. 

If Perses wants him so badly to drown, he could easily off Harry in his weakness.

Amazing how Perses still has the ability to make Harry sob. 

“Finally,” Perses sighs. It towers over Harry, but for once seems to have little interest in using the height to its advantage. Instead it sits, glaring half-heartedly down at him. “You have willpower, I’ll give you that. Never have I had such a difficult time convincing a _Master of Death_ to just _die_ already. The lot of you are typically suicidal, or at least reckless enough to be manipulated. But _no,_ you’ll only do it for _Lord Voldemort_.” Perses sneered. “Dying to protect a man you will not even confess your love for? I’m fairly certain that’s a cliche.”

Harry blinks at it. “You’re awful,” he says dully. “How ugly my soul must be.”

Perses sneers. “Do not be obtuse, boy. I am not your soul share—I have said it a thousand times. Why do you think I am an ‘it’? A _thing_ you never felt truly connected for unless you were actively deceiving yourself?”

“I cared about you plenty,” Harry snarled. “Forgive me for giving up on a creature who was actively driving me to suicide, but one would think that’s just common sense!”

Perses laughs. “There is your bite, little flea,” he says. Harry starts. Perses has not called him that for a very long time. 

And it has _never_ sounded _fond._

“If you are not my daemon, then who is?”

Arms wind around his waist. Warm lips press to his neck. “Hello Harry,” a voice whispers into the shell of his ear. “Can you hear me now?” 

There is something biting to the voice - a familiar irritation. Harry knows who holds him without looking. 

His muscles unwind. He sighs, surrendering to the hold, completely calm. Completely _settled_ for perhaps the first time in his life. Certainly for the first time in his death. 

“You.”

Tom Riddle smiles behind him, all teeth. “ _Me_.”

**Author's Note:**

> I read about three pages of a daemon story yesterday and was _inspired_. Honestly, I'm not too familiar with what daemon stories _are_ , so I just made something that suited me. 
> 
> Not much Tom/Harry/Voldemort, but it's always at least implied. 
> 
> There won't be any more of this. However, here's a bit of backstory if you're interested: The killing curse destroyed Harry's daemon. His mother's magic kept Harry chained to life, but without his daemon he was half in Death's realm. This only marked him further than the fates had; Death saw fit to intervene on behalf of his would-be master. But one can not truly be the Master of Death without first dying. Make of that what you will.
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you have time, drop a comment on your way out. :)


End file.
